A major grading service is pressing pause on most Pokémon cards.
PSA, a top grading and authentication service for trading cards, announced on May 28, 2026 that it is temporarily pausing its acceptance of new submissions at its four “Value” tiers of service. It cited increased submissions in response to a May 14, 2026 announcement of a $200 million investment into PSA to expand its capabilities. According to PSA, the two-week period after the May 14 announcement caused “a 20% spike in submissions that added another 1.6 million cards to our active backlog that is rapidly approaching 10 million.”
The pause begins on Tuesday, June 2, 2026 and will end when PSA halves its backlog to 5 million cards. Existing submissions are not affected, and tiers of service above Value remain open. Because Value Bulk card submissions are among the key benefits of the PSA Collectors Club, PSA also announced that it would extend free Collectors Club membership to all active members as of May 14, 2026 until it reopens Value tier submissions.
Value submissions let trading card owners get their cards certified less expensively if they were willing to wait. The per-card price for Value Bulk submissions was $24.99 per card for Collectors Club members. Once the pause is in place, the least expensive option at PSA will be Regular service at $79.99 per card, over triple the price.
Jeffrey Dohm-Sanchez, writing for ICv2, suggests that the PSA pause is an opportunity for rival authentication firms Beckett and CGC Cards. Beckett and PSA have the same parent company, Collectors, after a purchase agreement in December 2025. As a result, while PSA specifically may lose out on revenue while it clears the backlog, having another major grading service in its portfolio means that Collectors as a whole may miss out on surprisingly little.
